The Companions (20 page)

“That's right,” he said, flushing slightly. “No surveyors, no biologists or zoologists.”

I rubbed my forehead, interested despite the dagger stabbing my brain. “No physicians? No…designers or accountants? No cooks?”

“Derac cuisine consists of burning the fur, scales, or feathers off whatever they've killed, then eating it raw. Clothing is the untanned hide of whatever they've recently eaten, the smellier the better. Their word for famine is the same as their word for odorless, because when there's famine, they eat their clothing and don't smell anymore. They don't need accountants because every one of them can calculate in his head faster than you can feed data into a computer, including complex navigational computations and anything to do with money. You want to know how much your savings would be with variable interest compounded for a millennium, ask a Derac.”

He shook his head, making a face. “Nobody I know has ever seen a sick Derac, so physicians aren't needed. They may well eat anyone who's sick or wounded. They farm out all specialized work. Your average Derac shipclansman—that is, the younger members of the race—are willing to spend about five minutes on any nonship problem. If they can't solve it in five, they farm it out. Derac start to fidget if they have to stay two days in one place. They have no infrastructure to support science, engineering, procurement, or training. They have no history of it, and it would take generations to create one, just as it took us. They became starfarers by the back door, by buying ships. They don't build anything for themselves.”

I stood up. “I presume no music, no art.”

“Along toward dusk, they did something they called
singing. It was a kind of bellowing, actually. The elders spent a good deal of time sprawling about on warm rocks having what we would consider philosophical discussions, from what little we overheard. Why are we here? What are we for? What should we be doing? We weren't invited to listen in, as the Derac are consistently aggressive, even in ordinary daily life. We concentrated on the job and left as soon as it was done, though
done
isn't the right word. We're still recording Derac speech everywhere we can, refining our own understanding of their talk and what they really mean when they talk.”

I had been about to leave, but this stopped me. “We, being who?”

“The Interstellar Coalition Linguistics Board. Earth builds a lot of Derac ships, so the devices can be built in. Don't mention that to anyone, Jewel! It's against the IC conventions, and it's being done quietly, not only with the Derac, but with any race where understanding is questionable. The board feels it's better to breach the conventions to improve communication than have a misunderstanding start a war.”

“As they all too frequently have!” I commented before excusing myself and leaving Paul to finish his supper while I went to my room and used a pain spray. If I was now at the point of getting a headache every time I was in Paul's company for more than a few moments, the coming trip to Moss would not be a festival. I lay down to let the pain spray work, which it did, before donning the requisite robe and veil to keep my appointment with Gainor.

I met him by the lift, and took him into the nearest bistro, where we could sit uninterrupted for a time over a glass of a greenish brew suitably called Alga-alka. Though some people confessed a fondness for it, I couldn't drink it. Most people ordered it only as an excuse for occupying a seat. We each took one ritual sip before I filled him in on my bargain with Myra Hessing.

“So, you'll get all the pressure you need to keep ESC on
the planet for a while,” I concluded, reluctantly taking another sip to wet my throat.

“Were you counting on her asking this favor?” he asked, turning his glass to watch chains of sluggish green bubbles ooze upward.

“Actually, I intended to ask her to do it as a favor. Her asking me for a favor came out of the blue. Anyhow, the thing I wanted you to know was this strange Derac thing, about buying human women. I got Paul to talking over supper, and from what he says about them, it's obvious there's no way I'd be able to find out anything about the Derac, even if there are some of them on Moss. He did offer one item of interest, however. Do we do any listening on Derac retirement planets?”

“What listening?”

“Oh, come on, Gainor. Paul mentioned the IC Linguistics Board recording conversations. Myra mentioned her father being privy to such recordings. I know it's against the conventions and has to be deniable, but still…”

He scowled. “No. We haven't listened on their retirement planets. There aren't any humans on retirement planets. The lexicon project may have been the only time.”

“There have to be some other races who go there? The Derac aren't capable of building anything themselves.”

He stared at me, eyes narrowed. “Why do you ask?”

“It's what Paul said. It seems the ships have a social structure so rigid that very few words are needed, but Paul says the Derac actually change at some point in their lives, and that's when they retire to a planet and adopt a new culture. Rather as humankind did, fifty thousand years ago when we all of a sudden acquired opinions and vocabulary. When the Derac reach a certain point in their lives, they do the same. They lie about in the sun and discuss their philosophy of life, so that would be the place to put your listeners. You're in good with the Tharst, aren't you? They build things for other races, and those orbs they float around in have veiling capabilities, don't they?”

He gave me a look, slightly surprised, slightly amused. “Jewel, I'm noticing a devious part of you that I had not seen before. Tell me, is Paul taking his concs?”

I gritted my teeth. “Naturally! My hope is he won't have time to pay any attention to them. They're so idiotic!”

Gainor grimaced, leaning back in his chair and folding his hands across his expansive belly. He dropped his voice to say, “You know, don't you, that concs are the real tabula rasa, the blank slate upon which anyone may write what he pleases. Or she pleases.”

“I've only known Paul's, really. Oh, I've seen them in the pod lobbies and carrying packages, but…”

“Paul created their idiocy, Jewel, believe me. An acquaintance of mine has one that plays chess, rather well. And I know of one that dances beautifully. In each case, that's what the ‘owner' wanted. Or needed.” He sighed, stared at the ceiling for a moment. “Did you know the birthrate on Earth has dropped by some 80 percent since the concs were…introduced?”

I stared at him openmouthed. “Eighty percent? Are you sure?” I blurted it rather too loudly.

He put his finger to his lips and chuckled without amusement. “Oh, yes, Jewel, quite sure. Sure enough to make me wonder if they were put here for that purpose.”

“By whom?”

His face went momentarily blank; one nostril twitched, as though at an unpleasant smell. “We're not certain.”

“But you have an idea?” I pressed him.

He shrugged, the fingers of one hand making a rat-a-tat of discomposure. “We hear things. The Interstellar Coalition is a hotbed of…talk. I won't say rumor, because we're not at all sure it isn't fact. Whoever made the concs used Zhaar technology to create them. Most of the elder races have used it from time to time, but the race that uses it the most—that we know of—are the Orskimi.”

“Why would the Orskimi try to reduce our birthrate here on Earth?”

“Maybe they're short of living space. They like the same environment we do. They might begin the game by dropping concs into Earth's populace, at first only a few, so they're not seen as a threat, then more and more. If this were any other planet, when the birthrate dropped, the population would dwindle enough to make eventual conquest easy.”

“If this were…?”

“…any other planet, which it isn't. This is Earth. Every space not taken up by a local will be taken up by a returnee, so the population won't dwindle. A conc case takes up only about fifteen cubic feet, so the number of concs awake and moving around is only a fraction of the total present on Earth.”

“Doesn't the government keep an eye on how many there are?”

He fixed his eyes on the ceiling, musing. “Conc cases are manufactured and sold by Worldkeeper, as a monopoly, so we know how many cases there are, but not how many concs. We should know, but we don't, and any effort to get a count is met with a certain degree of…obstructionism.”

“From whom?” I demanded.

“Well, if I had wanted to introduce concs on Earth, I'd have hired a human agent to meet with certain Earthian legislators who are known to be for sale to the highest bidder. Posing as a friend of Earth, I'd have sold concs as a device to help Earth make more space for returnees by reducing the birthrate. I'd have explained that the system is foolproof because concs aren't human, they take up little human space and no human air, which is true, by the way. They respire, but only to produce speech, they don't use oxygen. They're like plants, they manage on our exhaled carbon dioxide. I'd mentioned that cellular makeup kills bacteria and viruses harmful to humans, so they don't spread disease or become ill, needless to say.

“And, if I did my job well, I imagine the people who were paid off would help me bring as many of them to Earth as they chose to.”

“The Earth Congress has forbidden export of concs to other worlds,” I said. “If tourists take them, they have to bring them back!”

“True,” he mused. “I'm guessing the next move will be an amendment attached to some obscure bill that defines concs as property. Later there will be an equally obscure amendment to the export law allowing people who are moving off planet to take their property with them. Once there are a few concs on Faroff, others will show up, just as they did here on Earth.”

“But all this…this strategy would take…a lifetime or more to cut our numbers, Gainor.”

“That's the primary reason I believe the Orskimi are involved. They're the only race we know of whose strategies extend over millennia. Ask your brother, the linguist. What other people have an ordinary word in daily use like
Skitim-orskiantasshampifa
, meaning
ultimate fruition of a plan laid by our early ancestors?
They're long-lived as individuals, true, but that doesn't explain how they can continue with these absolutely linear plans century after century, working toward ends that were decided millennia ago. How do they keep it going? On Earth, every time there's a new government there are new policies, but not among the Orskimi!”

“Who are suspected of using Zhaar technology.”

“Because they have two slave races that are extensively modified in ways that scream Zhaar.”

“But the Zhaar are dead, gone, lost. Nobody's seen them for aeons…”

He looked through me. “Not aeons, Jewel. More on the order of fifty to a hundred thousand years. So we're told.”

His absent look made me uncomfortable. “I've heard that some elder races in the IC wiped them out.”

He nodded. “So it's supposed, yes.”

I sat back, sipping, trying to find my way in our conversation. “Gainor, are you hinting that the Zhaar are not gone? Dead?”

He stared over my shoulder. “I'm saying, simply, that
when we were ‘discovered' by stargoing peoples, we were told about the Zhaar, but no one told us where they lived or what they looked like. We were told they were expelled from the galaxy. This one says a million years, that one says a hundred thousand or less. That's what the Tharstians say, so I go with that number. Each people is referring to its own years, of course, not ours.

“If we go to the IC Archives, we find a lot of Zhaar stories and things said about them by others, but no writings by the Zhaar themselves, no artifacts, because, so we're told, they were shape changers who could become anything they wanted to be. They didn't need tools, they became tools; they didn't create art, they became it. And even though they're supposed to be long gone, when a population suddenly disappears, as on Holme's World, everyone at IC starts nodding and whispering about the Zhaar having done it again.

“When the elder races, like the Phain or the Yizzang, are asked about the Zhaar, they say the question is irrelevant, the Zhaar are gone, but how could anyone know? If they were identity thieves, originators of a biotechnology that could modify any living thing, one of them might be sitting across the table from me at IC, looking me in the face, speaking to me out of a Yizzang or Phainic mouth.”

I took a deep breath. “And we go along with the idea that the Zhaar are gone because…?”

“We prefer to believe in a lot of things we aren't certain of. The goodwill and truthfulness of people we are negotiating with. The Articles of Confederation. Tomooze…”

I laughed. “Tomooze?”

“The Quondan believe it's a measurable quality. I say maybe it exists, maybe not, in the same way I say the Zhaar or some other race may or may not be sowing concs on our world as a takeover measure.”

“Do we have any strategies to oppose their actions, Gainor?” I asked him. “Assuming it's all true, are we doing anything about it?”

He showed me his lopsided smile and shook his head slowly, side to side, his new hair waving gently around his ears. “Why, my dear, if we did, I certainly wouldn't talk about it.”

That was what he said. What his face said was that whatever was being done, he didn't think it was enough. I started to protest, but he gave me no time to react. “Tell me good-bye, dear. I won't be seeing you for a while.”

I was momentarily sidetracked, for it was true he would not be seeing me for a very long time. I kissed his cheek.

“Don't be late for the ship,” he whispered.

“I won't, Gainor,” I assured him. “Take care.”

Reveiled, I went back to my floor, still possessed by that dreamlike discomfort I had been feeling for some time. As I left the local to walk back to the apartment, the feeling came into focus. Concs. Concs, too silly or infantile to cause fear; concs, adaptable, generally accepted, even enjoyed; concs, which were, if Gainor was right about them, as inimical as plague.